


Christmas: A Symphony of Four Years

by melforbes



Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 17:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9000763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melforbes/pseuds/melforbes
Summary: Their Christmases of 1993, 2010, 2012, and 2016.





	

* * *

**1993**

* * *

"I got you something," he said as she donned her coat in the basement-office, as she wondered just how much snow was falling outside. Christmas Eve, and her drive to Georgetown, like everyone else's, would be hideous. _Merry Christmas to me_ , she grumbled while she buttoned her jacket.

"I don't have anything for you," she said while he held out a little wrapped package the size of her palm. The tape on the edges was fraying, and from the way the red paper was folded, she wondered if he'd ever been taught how to wrap a present. Next year, she figured, she would show him how.

"That's okay," he shrugged off, seemed to have figured she wouldn't. After all, they'd been working together for, what, two or three months? They had barely passed pleasantries yet.

With the little package on her passenger's seat, she sat in D.C. traffic, the snow causing an accident and then that accident causing another accident and that accident causing the guy ahead of her to rear-end the minivan he'd been tailgating. Horns blaring behind her, she rolled her eyes, watched as a mother-of-four whose carefully-coiffed visage couldn't stand the test of the holidays yelled at some guy whose sedan slipped up in the snow. A car length back for every ten miles an hour, she knew, but apparently, that guy hadn't known.

She turned up the radio, an all-too-jovial "Jingle Bells" attempting to drown the Christmastime chaos, and because she hadn't moved for a while, she shifted into park, picked the little package up off of the seat. With manicured nails, she undid the tape, revealed two tickets for a showing of _The Pelican Brief_  on the 26th along with a note.

_If you're free._

* * *

**2012**

* * *

 She hadn't intended to be in a hospital on Christmas Eve, had specifically taken the day off and insisted that any and all reasons to contact her be diverted to the on-call Doctor Andrews instead. This year, she wanted to take the holiday in alone, to stay home and watch whatever was on TV and order Chinese food because the Greek place she preferred had closed for the week. Though she hadn't gotten a tree, had bought only a present for her mother and given that long before the holiday, put decorating off so long that there wasn't anything related to Christmas in her apartment other than her brother's family's Christmas card, she wanted to celebrate, to grab some store-bought eggnog and sink into _It's a Wonderful Life._

However, lo mein in hand, she'd found her night to have an unexpectedly upsetting element; this was the first Christmas she would have in which she didn't have a tree and a gift to give or receive, her first without some ravishing dinner, her first spent alone. When she got the call, she'd almost been relieved.

"An accident," she'd said into the receiver as though she hadn't heard, but it was clear and succinct as it could be, and she was, of course, his emergency contact. Though she'd been tempted to change hers, she'd known he would never change his.

So she parked in the too-tall garage, the Alexandrian lights casting a fluorescent glare on her little sedan. Behind her, she could hear the beep of a locking car, the sounds of gallows's laughter, the lighting of a cigarette; she hated cities at night, so she took her purse and zipped up her puffy coat, her breath dragoning as she walked toward the garage's elevator. For a few floors, she was alone, but then, two people stepped inside, one carrying a bouquet of baby-pink flowers and the other a _congratulations_  balloon. To herself, she smiled softly while her heart sank.

He was in the emergency room, and though she didn't understand the details, she figured that three things had been involved: anger, alcohol, and a lead foot. Chewing her lip as she walked past the outpatient lab, beyond the oncology ward that sent involuntarily chills down her spine, she tried in vain to figure out the most inexplicable element: the car. After he crashed his in 2008, he never bought another, gave up on driving in favor of just tagging along with her, and plus, she knew he never much liked driving anyway, did it exclusively when she'd been drinking or after one of her long shifts. Though his ambulance ride to the hospital hadn't been a surprise, the fact that it had been due to a car accident was.

As she walked past scrubbed people wheeling unfortunate souls around the place - _I'm so sorry, Mrs. Fletcher, that you have to spend the holiday with us instead of with your grandkids_  - she felt her throat tighten, her skin crawling with the sensation that something was about to go terribly wrong. Something about the smell here, the thickness of the weather outside, the desolate and disheveled look of illness, made her tense, and though she spent most of her time in one nowadays, she found that she hated hospitals. Wiry hair, disposable clothes, a sense that everything's wasteful because otherwise it's contaminated, a forced vulnerability, a lack of independence. She felt her stomach roll with her half-dinner; she genuinely hadn't wanted to spend the holiday at a hospital.

"I'm looking for Fox Mulder," she told check-in at the emergency room. "I'm his wife."

It was a lie, sort of. Those papers were somewhere in that mess he called his office, and they must've been lost among reports of alien activity and documents relating to his sister just like he had been. She'd signed her name but forgotten the date; he hadn't signed at all.

She was taken back to him, led beyond an elderly woman who seemed to be spending her final Christmas here, a little boy with a pale face and a mother who held his hand as though she could will him back to health, a solitary man holding the day's crossword and seeming nonchalant about all the tubes lining his arm. Over the phone, she'd been given a brief overview of his known condition, something about broken ribs and a concussion; though she typically thrived on stress, that call put her into a state of fear that left her forgetting all of its elements. As she was brought to his bed, as the curtain around him was pulled back, she took a deep breath, steeled herself.

"You got new glasses."

His lip was cut, his left arm in a sling, bruises lining his face and neck; beneath white blankets, he looked little-boy small, his breaths staggering - broken ribs - and his legs motionless. With untrimmed hair but a shaven face, he looked all too familiar, a man from her past; she could remember times like this, when she showed up to a hospital and found him all disheveled and beaten up while he said _Hey, Scully, what's up?_  as though nothing had happened.

She pulled the curtain back, gave them privacy; in the too-bright room - or sector, or whatever it could be called given that it was just a bed, a curtain, and tube-lined walls - she sat down in a chair beside him, dropped her purse by her feet. Because they'd been closest to the door when she'd gone to leave, she wore Michael Kors boots, brown leather with gold-initial accents, and within them, her feet hurt.

"If you have a concussion, then the lights should be off," she said quietly and mostly to her lap.

"Then it's a good thing that I don't have a concussion."

Her lips quirked softly, but she forced them down, folded her hands. Though he sounded like himself, that didn't eliminate why he was here.

"Where'd you get the car?" she asked.

The linoleum had a spot of dried blood right next to her bag, so she swallowed, felt her heart beat heavily throughout her body.

"Craigslist."

She nodded to herself; this wouldn't be easy.

"That isn't the answer I was looking for."

"I needed a car; I found a car. For only five hundred dollars too."

"That's not comforting."

"I never said it would be."

She took a deep breath while his hitched, so she sobered; she couldn't keep him talking given his broken ribs.

"I didn't think you would come," he said starkly, his voice casual, his tone indifferent.

But of course she came, for despite the separation, she still did things at the drop of a hat for him. One call, and she would be there, the circumstances be damned. Though she knew he needed therapy, she wondered how greatly she'd overlooked her own mental health in coming to that conclusion.

"How much had you had to drink?" she asked quietly.

With his silence, she chewed her lip.

"So you had a lot."

"Absolutely not," he said, so finally, she looked at him, really looked, saw how that comment had hit him; his face aghast, he looked at her with repulsion. _So that's what you think of me? You think I'm some drunk loner who crashes a car just to prove that to the world?_

"I'm sorry," she said, then cursed herself for apologizing. "I just don't understand what-"

"I came to an intersection, one with a stoplight," he explained, the Mulder-ness of his light and humorous tone replaced with something more cutting and honest; of course she would take the lightheartedness that was characteristic of the Mulder she wanted back and throw it away with one stupid comment. "I had a green light. I drove. They had a red. They drove too. And now I'm here."

She closed her eyes, cast them down.

"T-boned?" she asked.

"Sure."

"You weren't at fault."

"Don't sound so surprised."

"I'm not," she tried to defend.

"Don't lie to me either."

"I'm not!" she insisted.

"Why did you come?"

"Because they called me and asked me to!" She tried her best not to raise her voice. "You couldn't be here all alone, Mulder."

He went to laugh but cringed in the process, his poor ribs aching, so instinctively, she reached for him, her hands left to hover over his bed. Softly, she retracted them, folded them once more on her lap.

"I'm sorry," she let out with a breath.

"You leave because you think I rely too heavily on you, and then, you insist that I can't be alone," he threw back at her. "It's ripe. It's hypocritical."

"It is," she managed.

"You shouldn't be here."

"I'm not leaving."

"Why not?"

 _Because I love you,_  she thought. _Because you'll always be a part of me. Because when I heard that you were hurt, being anywhere other than by your side felt like betrayal, both toward you and toward myself. Because I sometimes find myself awake at two in the morning, insomnia heavy in my chest, my mind filled with concern that you're out there doing God-knows-what and that I'll only hear about it if the authorities show up. Because you're my partner, my best friend, and I know that hospitals scare you. Because I was alone on Christmas Eve and wanted so badly to be in your arms again, to have you whisper warm wishes to me in our even warmer home. Because I needed to see you again like I needed to breathe._

She struggled to find words, her mouth agape.

"Because it's Christmas," she said, a deflection at best but a response nonetheless. "No one should have to be alone in a hospital on Christmas."

She took a deep breath, let it out slowly.

"I wasn't planning on celebrating this year," he said.

Huffing a humorless laugh, she stared down at her hands. Chapped from her hospital's sanitizer, cracked from latex gloves, thinner than they were in her thirties. She read in a magazine once that the hands of elderly married couples developed grooves where they wore their wedding bands, but her hands were ornate and linear, no kinks to be found.

"Neither was I," she said, for after all it was the truth.

* * *

**2010**

* * *

"Are you two living in sin?"

Of all the questions throughout the night, that was the one that put him over the edge; the _are you Catholic?_  and _are you a friend of Dana's?_  and _well, what exactly do you do for a living?_  had made him uncomfortable, yes, but the embarrassment that crept up Scully's cheeks while some older woman asked about their bedroom life made him want to punch a hole in the wall. The sexism of it, the discomfort of taking something - even something outdated and misogynistic - from Scully, the thought that those who practiced her faith didn't approve, it all built up to that one question. Moments later, he excused himself to the bathroom, didn't dare leave until Scully came knocking with an apology on that woman's behalf.

Though he loved Margaret Scully, her Christmas Eve dinner was a threat to him like no other; while he was surrounded by church-goers and Bill Jr.'s family, he had to hear things he didn't agree with, knew that it was best to pipe down in order to stay most comfortable, and as he and Scully knew well, he didn't like to repress the truth. Mulder spent the whole time making small talk with people who suspiciously inquired about him; he could only speak so much about her work at the hospital, his hobby of taking drawing classes at the local college, and their house way out in the country before he ran out of things to say. And listening to Bill talk about his family, about how his son was about to start high school, about how his kid played short-stop and won the league championship? Mulder watched Scully the whole time, saw his same imaginings flow across her face; that was supposed to have been their life too. Over un-spiked eggnog, he tried to bring her to talk about it while they lingered in her mother's living room, but she was stoic, all nods and _that's nice_ while Bill had Matthew recite from memory his recent paper on the Declaration of Independence.

As they walked back to her car in the dark, their hands filled with to-go containers of ham, stuffing, green beans, and sliced pie, he glanced to her, saw her eyes downcast and solemn. The driveway to Maggie's home was icy; because she was wearing fancy little flat-shoes, he kept his containers in one hand in case he needed to steady her. In her long peacoat, she looked smaller than usual.

"So," he asked, unsure what to say, "are you still stuffed, or will we go for seconds on that cheesecake?"

Luckily, that made her smile, so she glanced to him, quirked an eyebrow.

"If I start wanting to get as big as Santa Claus himself, I'll consider it."

"C'mon," he said, nudging her. "Everyone knows that your cholesterol takes a vacation during the holidays. It won't count."

She gave him a look, then shook her head with a smile.

After she unlocked the car, he stuck the leftovers in the trunk, went over to the driver's side because she'd had a glass of wine a few hours ago. While she shed her coat - odd, for the night was chilly, and she rarely took off her coat, always seemed cold regardless of the car's climate - he turned over the engine, pushed the seat back so that his legs, longer than her little ones, weren't jammed up against he pedals. When he went to put his hands on the wheel, she reached out to stop him, made him look over at her.

"We have time, right?" she asked, then checked the car's clock. Nine-oh-one. Yeah, they had a few hours, so she climbed over the console, straddled his hips, shoved his seat even farther back; before he could mentally catch up, her hands carded messily through his hair, and she kissed him with fervor, I've-been-away-from-you-too-long fervor, an intensity he hadn't known to expect. Softening, he brought his hands to her hips while he kissed her back, his eyes closing as she inhaled deeply around him. When she ground her hips into his, he pulled back, turned his head so that he could suppress her.

"What's wrong?" she asked, breath far from her.

"Someone's going to see," he said, his heartbeat overwhelming him.

"I don't care."

She undid two buttons of his shirt, sucked at the skin she revealed there.

"Scully," he insisted, but he didn't want to resist her so much as he wanted her to resist him; he'd caused her enough embarrassment by simply existing around her family, so he might as well not cause her more.

Back in 1999, right before he managed the courage to kiss her, he went with her to Maggie's dinner, Scully's pleas of _Mulder, I need you there, I feel so out of sorts and don't want to go there alone_  convincing him to override his plans to do nothing in mere moments, so he stood with her throughout the night, was introduced as _Dana's coworker_  and silently labeled as lonely and reclusive throughout the night; technically, those labels hadn't been incorrect. Regardlessly, he spent the night by Scully's side, acted as her rock while Bill and Tara went on and on about how brilliant parenting a toddler was, and though Mulder at the time hadn't understood the allure, he knew now what such a thing meant to a father, what being the person who teaches a child that the world is theirs to embrace means to someone. Under the table, he'd held Scully's hand until Bill had to deal with spit-up or diapers or whatever else children of that age did. He'd driven her home that night too.

"Want to come up?" she'd asked, her face softer back then, her makeup near-spent. "For coffee or something. Plus, I can't carry all these leftovers myself."

So he'd followed her up to her apartment, boxed food in his hands while she unlocked her door; what started as a cup of coffee turned into three hours of talking, a modest and near-accidental gift exchange like the one they'd done the year beforehand, an _oh, shit, it's midnight?_  as the day turned to Christmas, a quiet goodbye at her door while he wondered how brilliant she would look in the morning, how sleepy and warm she would be as she checked whether or not Santa had eaten the cookies he'd insisted on setting out.

But back then, he was _Dana's coworker_ , and he wasn't the one selling her soul to the devil. No, that wasn't the right phrase, but regardlessly-

"Stop," he said, pushing her gently away from him. That span of his chest was bound to bruise.

"What?" she asked incredulously, as though they weren't making out in her mother's driveway while their car ran.

"I don't want to embarrass you in front of your friends and family."

She huffed a laugh.

"Those aren't my friends."

"Well, I don't want to embarrass you in front of them anyway."

"And how is this embarrassing?"

Pulling her sweater up over her shoulders, she left it on the passenger's seat, took his hand and reached it up to trace over her shirted breast.

"You heard what they woman said," he gave. "Living in sin. I doubt this is what they want to see."

She pressed his thumb against her nipple.

"Then they can look away."

"Scully," he insisted, so she brought her open hand to his face, made him meet her eyes.

"I am not ashamed of you," she said. "I could never be embarrassed by you. I don't care what they say, Mulder. All they know is their rigid way of the world. They don't know us at all."

"Scully-"

"I love you," she punctuated. "That's never going to change. I don't care what they think about you, or about me and you. I just care about you."

Softly, she kissed his forehead for emphasis. He counted their first true Christmas together as 2005, when they chopped down a tree on their big, rural property and hung the thing haphazardly in their living room, her childhood ornaments eventually strung all over it. After he'd managed to work that damned string of lights, she insisted that he lift her up so she could put that little angel treetopper of hers on, so he lifted her ineffectively by the waist while she faced him, forcing him to angle their bodies while she reached with all her might for the branches on top. Once she'd cried out in victory at securing the angel on top, she leaned down and kissed his forehead like that, and though he couldn't quite see it, he'd known that she was smiling.

She thumbed at the button on his pants, bit her lip in asking, so he leaned in to kiss her once more, stayed tentative and soft against her.

"So," he said, reaching down between her legs, "you want to fuck in your mother's driveway."

"Took you long enough to catch on."

"In front of anyone who may be walking by."

She brought his earlobe between her lips and sucked.

"Quite possibly even a priest."

He pressed his thumb into the seam of her pants, felt her breath hitch against him.

"And you," he twirled his thumb around there, felt her go pliant against him, "probably don't want me to draw this out too long, hence checking the time."

"Don't get inquisitive on me right now," she husked into his ears as she undid his pants, as she reached below them.

"Don't bump the horn," he warned.

But she did. Twice, even. So to speak.

* * *

**2012**

* * *

"Ma'am?"

Uncomfortably, she stirred, her aching knees pressed to her chest, the light blinding as she opened her eyes. For the most part, her ponytail had fallen out, and her boots, askew on the floor, looked like torture to put back on.

In front of her, a tall woman stood, a clipboard and a pen in her hands.

"Merry Christmas, ma'am," she said. "I need you to fill out his insurance forms."

"Of course," Scully said.

A perk of his losing the divorce papers, a perk of not returning her lawyer's calls: he was still on her insurance. Taking the clipboard, she gave a half-assed smile and nod to the woman, let her walk away and close the curtain once more.

Looking over to him, she watched as he slept, a late-night pain shot giving his cracked ribs momentary ease. In bed, he held the look of a man beaten in a particularly bad bar fight, of someone who'd given up and taken the blows as they came. Why had he even been out anyway? After all, it was Christmas Eve, but what was Christmas to him without her? Without her religious aspect, what did it mean to him? Just another day of the year, she figured. Somehow, it had become that way for her too.

She checked her watch, four-forty in the morning; it was officially Christmas, and if she were to bother with the theoretical physics of it all, she could predict exactly where Santa would be right now. In the past, she'd wished for a chance to show her future children long lists of calculations proving how quickly Santa could travel while their little blue eyes looked on in awe. She liked the hypocrisy of it, how she would prove the existence of the nonexistent to their children but never prove the existence of what could exist to their father.

Across from her, he woke softly, so she watched as he opened his eyes, hoped the pain wouldn't keep him up.

"Hey," he managed, his voice gravelly; she wondered if he could get another shot for the pain so soon.

"Hey," she said. "You're still on my insurance, right?"

"Right," he said gruffly. "I'm no good with stuff like that."

"I assume you haven't used it much," she said as she penciled in her provider's number, as she filled out his address and information.

"No, I have," he said. "Only under the deductible, though."

"For what?"

She looked up at him, met his eyes; with mild shock, he held her gaze, gave incredulously, "Therapy. And medication."

_Oh._

"Oh," she said.

"I've been going for quite a while," he said, shocked that she hadn't figured it out.

"I didn't realize."

"So you just figured I'd spent all of this time sitting around and doing nothing?" he aggressed. "You told me that if I didn't start seeing someone, you would leave, and, mind you, that's not a healthy rhetoric, Scully. And I didn't, so you left, so _now_  I'm seeing someone. I can't believe that's a surprise for you."

She steeled herself in front of him, deflected with, "Are you in pain?"

"Of course I'm in pain," he forced out. "I was fucking t-boned."

"Okay," she said with relief, would chalk this up to _he doesn't mean it and is only hurting_ , but deep down, she knew that pain brought the truth out of people.

When the woman returned for the clipboard, Scully gave it back, then asked if a nurse could come by to give him more pain medication. While she sat back, she glanced back to him, his eyes closed but his body showing no signs of sleep.

"Merry Christmas," she offered, then cursed herself for doing so.

"I didn't get you anything," he said.

"I didn't get you anything either."

"First time in, what, ten years?"

"I can't remember."

"I should've gotten you something," he said.

"Like what?"

"Vibrator," he deadpanned. "High-end. Twenty speeds."

And at that, she laughed, genuinely laughed, her body thick with fatigue and her vision blurry but her mind alight with that comment. She could imagine it, the only gift beneath her nonexistent tree being some pinkish silicone emblem of loneliness.

"I could replace your car," she mused. "Give you an upgrade. One that costs seven-hundred instead."

He perked a smile for that, looked at her with amusement.

"Merry Christmas to you too," he said.

It wasn't the one she'd expected, she knew, but this Christmas somehow was better than the one she'd expected.

* * *

**2010**

* * *

Pajama-clad and with a box he'd wrapped in her hands, she sat on the floor in front of their Christmas tree, her recently-painted fingernails quiet but alight with excitement. Each Christmas Eve, they followed her family's tradition of opening just one present; at his insistence, she was going first. As she ran one nail beneath his carefully-crafted folds, he reached out to stop her, made her look up with disdain.

"Don't-"

"You have to guess."

"Mulder, no."

"Come on," he insisted, drummed on his lap for emphasis. In the background, Sinatra's Christmas album played on vinyl; only the white lights on the gold-toned tree were lit, so she was cast in a warm bronze glow, her hair messy from the day and one of her eyebrows askew. Though he'd tried to take a picture of her like this, the camera on his smartphone couldn't even begin to capture her beauty.

She huffed a _fine,_  tried, "It's...a pillowcase."

"A pillowcase?" Mulder pouted. "Have a little faith."

"It's those new towels I'd said I wanted."

"Oh," he grimaced. "No."

"A baseball bat."

"That's just uneducated."

She gave him a look, broke open the Santa-printed paper while he watched with a smile. After so many years, he figured he would've had a hard time finding something for her, but somehow, he always managed a few boxes under the tree without resorting to a Googled how-to guide of presents for your not-yet-wife significant other. As she pulled the paper away from the Nordstrom's box, she gave him yet another look, and then, he figured he should do something about the  _not-yet-wife_ thing sometime soon.

"If this is that bright pink suit you joked about...." she trailed off, shaking her head.

With quiet giddiness, he watched as she opened the box, as she pulled the the tissue away, as she looked down at the dress inside. It was periwinkle, sleek and sleeved, something he saw in the shop's window and instantly imagined on her, the skirt hugging her curves while the color made her eyes shine like opals. Softly, she smiled down at the dress, said, "This is beautiful. Thank you."

"Pick it up," he said, nodding down at the dress.

She quirked an eyebrow but did as he said anyway, lifted the dress out of the box; as it unfolded, two printed slips of paper fell out, so after admiring the dress for a moment, she folded it again, picked up the slips. While she read the first one over, he waited with anticipation, was desperate for her response. Then, she met his gaze, her eyes bright and near laughter on her lips.

"This is a dinner reservation."

"It is."

"At one of the tallest buildings in the world."

"Well, it used to be the tallest building in the world, but-"

"On New Year's Eve."

He shrugged.

"You said you wanted to do something special this year."

That breathless smile still on her face, she looked over the other sheet of paper shook it at him.

"Two plane tickets to Toronto."

"And a dinner reservation at the CN Tower," he confirmed. "And that's the extent of the planning I've done because we both know you're better at it."

Laughing to herself, she stared down at the dress once more, her eyes warm; though he'd contemplated having her open the in-class sketch he'd done after a picture of her, a sketch he got on A on, he figured that, based on her smile, this one was the better idea.

"I'm sorry I forgot about the towels," he admitted.

"I'm not," she said, running her fingers over the dress again. Of course, he knew her size, but nonetheless, he had the receipt for it folded up in his office...somewhere. Okay, maybe it was good that he knew her size to begin with.

After she closed the box, left the two slips inside, she passed him a wrapped box, folded her legs, and watched intently as he weighed the box in his hand, as he held it to his ear and shook it.

"Well, it certainly isn't a puppy."

"Open it!" she insisted with a laugh.

"Is it a life-sized replica of the smooth endoplasmic reticulum?"

"What? No," she said. "And that would be far too small to see with the naked eye. And next to impossible to create."

"With love, anything is possible."

She rolled her eyes.

"Open the box."

He furrowed his brow as he thought.

"A new belt."

"Mulder."

"A single box of cereal."

"Why on earth would I-"

He tore the paper off haphazardly, found a Brooks Brothers box beneath. While he gave her a look, she sobered, admitted, "That's not suggestive. I just found the box in the attic."

"Good," he said, opening the box, "because I think we both know that the last time I wore a suit was-"

Interrupting himself, he looked down at what was in the box: a big spiral-bound sketchbook that took up most of the space in the box, a smaller bound sketchbook about the size of an agenda, a pack of varied-weight pencils, and a high-quality box of colored pencils.

"I hope those are the right ones," she said nervously. "You've been so into it lately, but I know nothing about art, so I didn't really know what to go for. And I know you don't like showing them to me, and I understand that, and this isn't a ploy to get you to show them to me; I just know that this relaxes you and that you enjoy it, and-"

"This is amazing," he said, his smile wide as he looked over each of the pencils. At home, he'd just been using some Target ones that she'd bought who-knew-when; he was going to keep these new ones in tip-top shape, use them as the honor they were, and finally, he had some bigger paper than just the stuff he managed to grab from the college. As an adult, he rarely felt the giddiness of using a present right away in the same way he had as a child, but right then, he wanted to crack one of the sketchbooks open and draw each part of their quietly-lit living room, from the spinning Sinatra record to the golden tree to the way wisps of her hair caught the light. Though he'd only drawn her once so far, he figured she would be often found in these sketchbooks; he eyed the reddish pencils, wondered which one best matched her hair.

Looking back up at her, he said genuinely, "Thank you so much."

"I'm really glad you like them," she said, relieved. "I was so scared that I would buy the wrong ones."

"No, they're perfect," he said softly, set their two boxes aside so that he could scoot closer to her and bring her pajamaed frame into his arms. As she leaned against him there, he breathed her in, breathed the scents of Christmas dinner and her shampoo. Before they started dating, he'd always wondered why she loved Christmas so much, but as he held her there, the night quiet, the house filled with a warm glow, the record crackling along like a stove-fire, he understood.

"Merry Christmas, Scully," he whispered to her.

She pulled him closer as he exhaled.

* * *

**2012**

* * *

The house was remarkably untouched given that he still lived in it; though the outside had been repainted, and though the deck looked more ornate than it previously had, everything felt the same, from the kitchen to the living room to the little things like the salt-and-pepper shakers, each in the shape of a space shuttle, on the kitchen table. She helped him up the stairs while she tried not to feel uncomfortable.

"I would be fine on the couch," he insisted, but she forced him up anyway.

"Doctor's orders," she insisted.

"Ha ha."

She pulled back the duvet that she'd bought, helped him crawl beneath the sheets that she'd bought and let him nestle in there.

"I'm going to stay if you don't mind," she said, taking a seat at the foot of the bed. "If you need help, I'd rather you figure that out while I'm here and not once I've gone."

"Though I appreciate the gesture, I'm fine, Scully," he insisted. "Lacerations, a dislocated shoulder, and some cracked ribs are no cause for alarm."

She gave him a look.

"Okay, so maybe they are," he admitted. "But I'll be fine by myself."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," she said. "I'll be downstairs. Text me if you need something."

"Can't I just shout instead?"

"With your cracked ribs?"

"Oh," he said. "Right."

Shaking her head, she stood up and headed downstairs toward the living room, where she tentatively took to the couch, cautiously reached for the TV remote. She flipped through the channels, found _It's a Wonderful Life_  and left that on for now; glancing back, she saw that the door to his office, a door he typically kept tightly-locked, was fully open, so she softly walked over, let her curiosity dominate her respect for his privacy.

To her surprise, the place was organized, the walls covered ornately but still covered, the desk mostly empty save for his sketchbooks, his pencils, and a stack of legal-looking papers. Her fingers hovering over his sketchbooks, she wondered if he'd taken any classes recently, if he'd been working on anything new. Though he never liked to let her look through his sketchbooks, preferred to show her individual works when he thought they were properly polished and done, she opened this book anyway, looked down at sketches she'd already seen. Her, her, her, all dated for 2010 or 2011. Then, the dates weren't labeled, and the sketches became erratic, a few lines here and a few lines there, the semblance of a face oddly like hers just barely coming to the page. Then, she reached the 2012 ones, all sharply-done with nice pencils and labeled with little notes he'd never previously written at the bottom of the page.

_Prompt 41: What's in front of me right now._

The sketch was of four things: a pencil case, a cracked Samsung phone, a steaming mug, and a package of sunflower seeds. To herself, she smiled as she flipped the page.

_Prompt 12: My non-dominant hand_

Though she knew better than to touch, she wanted to wrap her fingers around his alarmingly-lifelike drawing, could recognize the kinks and freckles of his hand, noticed that he had a little bump on his ring finger.

_Prompt 17: A happy moment_

Just their silhouettes and two lights in the sky. She bit her lip to keep from smiling too much.

_Prompt 37: Something you lost_

Her face fell as she stared down two side-view portraits, one of her and one of Samantha. Promptly, she shut the book, scolded herself for looking through it at all. Before she could leave the office, something caught her eye, the pile of legal papers looking all too familiar, so she backtracked, stared down her signature and no date. On top of the papers was a sticky note.

_Call her and tell her why you won't sign_

Drifting, she headed upstairs, opened the bedroom door; of course, he wasn't asleep, but even if he were, she would've spoken anyway.

"Why won't you sign?"

"What?"

"The-"

" _Oh,_ " he said, as though he didn't even want that word to enter their home, his home, _whatever._

"So why not?"

In the doorway, she towered over him, held a conversational advantage that she rarely held. He looked over to her, his eyes almost seeming defeated. Though he could total his car and be stuck in the hospital all night, it was this, the divorce papers, that forced him to fully back down.

"Because I was wrong, and you were right, but neither of us went about that revelation particularly well," he said. "I'm working hard right now, Scully. I'm doing what I can because I know now how distant I've been, and I never want to put you through that again. What I need right now, what we _both_  need right now, is time and space. Time, to heal and to work on ourselves. Space, to ensure it's for ourselves and not for each other. A...a divorce won't solve what's wrong here, Scully. I know it won't."

Looking down, she nodded.

"I meant to mention this earlier," she said, diverting the subject so that she could leave the room and hopefully then leave the house altogether. As he'd said, they needed time and space. "The world didn't end."

He gave a bittersweet half-smile.

"That depends on whether or not you agree with me."

"And what if I don't?"

"Then that prediction was off," he said, "but only by a few days."

* * *

**2016**

* * *

"Wake up. Wake up! C'mon. Wake up, wake up, wake-"

She reached her arm back and felt around for his mouth, clamped her palm over it to the muffled sound of _Scully, Scully, Scully._  Squinting her tired eyes open, she saw on her bedside clock that it was just past nine, that light was creeping in from the windows.

He yanked her hand away, then asked, "Why is it that you're up-and-about before eight without fail _every day,_  but you sleep in on Christmas?"

"It's a holiday," she mumbled into her pillow.

"Yeah, so is Valentine's Day, and so is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but you don't sleep in on those days."

"Well, neither of us gets much sleep on Valentine's Day."

With his lack of response, she quirked her lips; she had him beat. However, he insistently wrapped an arm around her, spooned against her back, whispered against her neck, "Merry Christmas. Get out of bed."

"Five more minutes."

" _Scully._ "

"I'm tired."

"I want to make us all breakfast."

"I want to sleep."

"We'll take a nap in the afternoon."

"Mulder."

"I bought the ingredients for cinnamon waffles."

She wiggled back against him, a silent negotiation tactic.

"You can start on them while I sleep," she said knowing that he wouldn't be going anywhere.

"Come on," he said, nudging her shoulder. "Don't you want to open presents? See what Santa brought?"

"Mom! Dad!"

And that was his cue to back off, so he pulled away from her, scooted to the opposite side of the bed. _We're setting a good example,_  he figured as he and his fully-pajamaed wife were at opposite ends of their king-sized mattress. After all, teenagers needed direction when it came to romance, and in his opinion, all of the best teenage romances were the fully-clothed ones.

"Wake up! Wake up!"

Will rapped on their bedroom door while Scully covered her ears.

"We're awake," Mulder called.

"I'm starving!" Will insisted on the other side of the door. "And it's Christmas! We have to open presents before church, and if you two lazy-asses-"

"Hey!" Mulder threw back. "No cursing."

"As I was saying," Will continued, that streak of his mother shining through, "if you don't get up, then we'll be late to-"

" _Fine,_ " Scully groaned as she shoved her legs out of bed, as she moodily stood up. "Breakfast. Go. And make me some coffee."

Though they usually didn't eat before church, Mulder was happy to oblige, whipped the door open and raced Will down the stairs so that they could start on the waffles. By the time Scully meandered down the staircase, covering her mouth as she yawned, they'd already managed to plate big fluffy waffles, Will's topped with a little bit of whipped cream while Mulder's had heaps.

"Ah, health food," she said as she dipped down and kissed both of their cheeks before joining them at the kitchen-table.

"Scully, it is the  _one day_  of the year when everything indulgent is celebrated," Mulder said in a voice she figured was suitable for audiobook recordings. "Seize the day. And the sugar."

With a mouthful of waffle, Will nodded in agreement.

In 2012, the world hadn't ended, and in 2015, it hadn't either; now, their son was home, had been since they'd found him as the sole survivor on that family farm. Almost a year and a half later, he was such a large part of their lives that they'd forgotten what it was like to be without him; Mulder did the school runs, Scully picked him up from sports practice - basketball in the winter, baseball in the spring - and they both went to his games on the weekends, wore school colors in every embarrassing way they could. Though Will would complain offhandedly and make jokes that they weren't related during those times, Mulder and Scully could tell that each little embarrassing moment held a bittersweetness as well. They'd all missed out on enough to know to treasure each little thing.

And it was almost terrifying how strongly their son resembled each of them, from his aptitude for math and science to his terrifyingly creative designs to the blue of his eyes, one they couldn't determine to be more Mulder or more Scully. His hair, however, was different, a sandy brunette color that neither of their families seemed to have, but his freckles were all hers. Right now, he wanted to go to school for video game design, already had made a few games himself, but Scully nonetheless ever-so-lovingly pushed engineering his way.

Mulder set a cup of coffee down in front of her, cream and no sugar.

"Thanks," she said, noticed that the boys were already done with their waffles though she was barely halfway through hers.

"C'mon, Mom, why do you only slack off on Christmas?" Will asked with a mock-pout, the gesture so very Mulder that it made her instinctively smile.

"See?" Mulder said as he took his and Will's plates and set them in the kitchen-sink. "I was just saying that."

"Yeah, yeah," she said, then finished off her waffle. Taking a sip of her coffee, she closed her eyes and smiled; today, she needed caffeine in order to keep up.

"So," Mulder said as he scooped up Scully's plate and tossed it on top of the others in the sink, "presents!"

"Yes!" Will said.

"Hold on," Scully said.

That receive a simultaneous _Mom!_  and _Scully!_  in response, so she groggily stood up, followed her too-excited boys over to the Christmas tree, where piles of presents sat. An unwrapped box from Germany was waiting for all three of them, some kind of treat from Bill; though he hadn't known what to think of William's reappearance, he'd sent their son a birthday gift, a model train car that Will kept on his desk, and each time Scully saw it, she felt overcome with thankfulness. In the pile, she knew that Mulder had placed a few things for both her and Will, and her more-neatly wrapped presents - she still hadn't managed to help Mulder learn to wrap a present - sat off on one side. However, two new ones were on top, each in little gift bags.

"What're those?" she asked as she sat down in front of the tree, as she set her mug down on the coffee-table.

"Oh, those are for you guys," Will said offhandedly though she knew it must've taken effort for him to buy them gifts without their knowing. After all, he was only sixteen, didn't have his license yet, and though Mulder had rather frequently encouraged him not to, Will tended to keep them in the loop as to where he was and what he was doing.

"Can we open those first?" Mulder asked, cross-legged in front of the tree.

Shrugging, Will said, "Sure."

So Mulder took the two little bags down, passed Scully hers and hovered his fingers over the bag while she peeked inside. Then, he pulled the gift out, smiled down at a little baseball with an alien-face printed onto the side.

"That's fantastic," Mulder said.

"I'm glad you like it," Will gave with a smile, a bit of relief on his face, so Scully's heart swelled.

As she opened up her bag, she found a little metal piece, and as she pulled it out, she saw that it was a key-chain, the dollar-fifty price tag still on it; the dangling metal off of the ring spelled out in bright sparkly letters _World's Best Mom!_ , and though she knew that that was far from true, she felt tears spring to hear eyes anyway. Tracing her fingers over it, she knew it would go on her key-ring, that it would stay there until it tarnished or broke or whatever else it would do. It would stay next to her car keys, her house keys to this house and to _only_  this house, her hospital badge and everything else she used throughout the day. Over and over, she reread it: _world's best mom, world's best mom, world's best mom._

"Thank you," she managed, determined not to cry, so as both deflection and gratitude, she brought her son into her arms, hugged him there. As always, he squeezed back with the same thankfulness she had.

"Merry Christmas, Mom," he said.

 _Yes,_  she thought. _It's a merry Christmas indeed._

* * *

**1993**

* * *

"Well, I liked it," he said. "Good acting, good script. A lot of suspense."

She quirked her lip as they walked out of the theater, teased, "I prefer bloodier movies."

"Well, it was that or _Dave,_  and I never pegged you as a fake-president plot kind of gal."

She rolled her eyes and smiled while he walked her to her car.

"So, what was this supposed to be, Agent Mulder?" she asked in her young voice, her hands in the pockets of her coat. "A friendly outing, and I-owe-you for all the times I've spotted you for coffee?"

He didn't respond as they came to her car, so she leaned against the passenger door, ventured, "A date?"

"A _date?_ " he huffed with a laugh, brushed it off with ease though she could see that he was blushing. "Agent Scully, I'll have you know that my intentions were, and have _always_  been, pure."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah."

She unlocked the passenger-door, left her purse on that seat.

"I'll see you at work tomorrow," she said as she headed over to the driver's side, climbed into her car as she waved goodbye.

A new suit from her mother, a set of healing stones from her sister, a mostly-rude gun cleaning set from her brother. Christmas this year had been a steady reminder of what others wanted from her, of the people she needed to become in order to please her family. However, all Mulder had asked for was a chance to see a movie with her; he'd bought popcorn and everything though she'd only had two bites. Back home, she had a few Kohl's sweaters to return, a package of socks to open, but all Mulder had asked of her was a chance to see a movie.

As she drove home, she smiled.


End file.
